Police deny knowledge of plot to oust Zuma

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Johannesburg - Police have no knowledge of the veracity and sale of an intelligence report alleging that ANC members were behind a plot to oust President Jacob Zuma, they said on Thursday.

It was reported on Thursday that the document had been faked by spies, then sold by them for R200 000 before it was passed on to suspended crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli.

Information contained in this document formed part of the classified Ntlemeza report which was presented in Mdluli's bail hearing in the Boksburg Magistrate's Court last week.

Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela said: "We don't know anything about it," referring to the claim that the document was a fake and had been sold.

"We always said it didn't originate from crime intelligence, so we are not surprised at all," he said.

The court hearing Mdluli's bail application was told that, according to the Ntlemeza report, junior intelligence members were spying on Mdluli and trying to derail his promotion.

He presented a letter to the court in which he asked President Jacob Zuma to intervene, claiming that those spies were aligned to former president Thabo Mbeki.

Mdluli and three others face charges of, among others, murder and defeating the ends of justice pertaining to an alleged love-triangle murder committed 12 years ago.

It is not clear if Mdluli, who is in custody pending the outcome of the bail hearing, paid for the purportedly fake 22-page document.

Allegiance

The SA Police Service (SAPS) distanced itself from the document on Wednesday.

It did not have a political agenda and its role was to fight crime, it said.

Deputy national commissioner Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya said: "The work of the SAPS is underpinned by such a rigorous system of checks and balances that this document would not have passed even a single of the many verification tests that documents of its nature have to go through in order for them to be entered into the organisation's official register."

Also on Wednesday, Polela said that the document, titled 'Ground Coverage Intelligence Report - Alleged Corruption and Related Activities KwaZulu-Natal', had no status in the police department and had never been registered with any of its units for any purpose.

"The SAPS would like to record the fact that it neither commissioned nor compiled the document," he said amid claims that it had emanated from an investigation into national police commissioner General Bheki Cele."

The Sunday Independent reported that Cele had switched allegiance from Zuma, who was his long-time ally, to Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale.

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